


Don't You Dare Go Hollow

by EverythingIsNumbers



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Inspiration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 11:59:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11691180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EverythingIsNumbers/pseuds/EverythingIsNumbers
Summary: The Chosen Undead returns to firelink, declaring that Anor Londo has bested her and she has given up hope. Laurentius comforts her.





	Don't You Dare Go Hollow

Laurentius of the great swamp was whittling when the chosen undead returned. It was an idle task to keep idle hands occupied. He was carving mostly from memory, a small figure of a bird he had seen in his homeland, now extinct. The name of the species eluded him, but that was fine. The name wasn’t what he needed to remember.

When she came staggering back to Firelink Shrine, he stood suddenly, casting his carving aside. She had arrived from the direction of the old church, clad in dented armor, her skin the wrinkled and rotting texture of a hollow. She walked with a limp. Nothing permanent for the undead, but worrying all the same.

Upon being noticed, the chosen undead collapsed and lay face down in the dirt. He rushed over, mumbling words of encouragement as he tried to pick her up. Eventually he settled for dragging her back to the bonfire, the plates of her armor scraping on the hewn stone of the shrine. She made no effort to move. Not even to raise her head.

When she was beside the bonfire, Laurentius swallowed hard and regarded her. The sunken eyes were unfocused, she was missing her nose, and there were a great many bloody gashes in her armor. Again, nothing that couldn’t be fixed with enough rest. No damage was permanent to the undead, though pain could not be escaped. Laurentius had learned this time and time again.

He rooted through her belongings, searching for something to make her comfortable. A bedroll perhaps. She had none. Reflecting, Laurentius realized that she always slept hunched over the fire, and the only time he had ever seen her take her armor off was to repair it.

In the end, he surrendered his own bedroll. She made no move to resist him when he started to undress her, and before long she was lying wrapped up next to the bonfire, staring unblinkingly into the flames while Laurentius did his best to hammer the dents out of her armor. It was a more purposeful craft than whittling birds.

All the while he tried to make smalltalk. He told her what he was trying to do with her armor. He asked if she was comfortable. He talked about how that crestfallen fellow had decided to leave for some reason or another, so it was just them and the mute Firekeeper still at the shrine. She didn’t seem to be listening.

He realized that there really wasn’t anything else to say. Nothing was new. Eventually, he was silent. She might have slept. It was hard to tell. A lot of time passed.

 

“Your armor’s done, so it’s back to whittling for me.” He told her, when he thought she might be listening. Her eyes shifted, and he was sure they were trying to focus on him. “I’ve taken up whittling” he said in awkward clarification.

“That’s good.” She said. Her voice was dusty, and she coughed. Laurentius stood up and brought her the Estus flask. 

“Gods, friend. You had me worried you might never speak again. What happened to you?” She sipped the estus with frustrating reluctance. He laid her head in his lap and cradled it at a favourable angle, hoping she wouldn’t choke. When she had finished, she took a deep breath and let it out with a coughing fit, then closed her eyes, relieved. The Estus mended the bones of the undead, and it was the only thing that could relieve pain.

“You’ll need more than that. Come on, drink up.” He nudged her lips with the flask, but she refused to budge. They sat in silence for a while longer, Laurentius gently stroking the coarse wisps of hair protruding from her charred skull. 

It was the chosen undead who broke the silence next.

“No point.” She whispered. Laurentius leaned in.

“No point? No point to what?”

She nodded to the flask that he had set beside her.

“No point in drinking. Just need enough to keep away the pain.”

“That’s bollocks. Drink it all if you can. Keep yourself in shape.”

“No point in being in shape.”

Laurentius let a conversational beat pass in worried silence.

“What about the fate of the undead?” He asked. Laurentius only had a tenuous grasp of what that meant, but it sounded important. It’s why she had rung the bells of awakening, after all. It had to be important.

She only shook her head sadly.

“Don’t care any more. Don’t need to know.”

She rolled her head off his lap, letting it clonk to rest on the dirt. Laurentius quickly moved aside and lay her down more comfortably. He regarded her as she closed her eyes again, but she didn’t speak further. Her breathing slowed, and she fell into a more human sounding sleep.

“Look at you.” Laurentius whispered pitifully, studying the creases on her face, the wrinkled sinew that held her exposed bones together. “You’re practically hollow.”

 

Days passed like this. When the chosen undead was too weary to argue, Laurentius forced her to drink Estus. When she was adamant, he listened to her crestfallen words.

“I have been to Anor Londo” she told him demurely. He looked up with a start, but was shushed. “No, quiet down, I’ve had enough of gobsmacked fools recounting the myths of that place. Anor Londo is grand, but unwelcoming.”

“But is it true that the sun still shines there? Is it true that the giants still roam, and it is still guarded by Gwyn’s loyal servants?”

The chosen undead scoffed and waved a hand. 

“Yes. It is true. And so it is impossible for me to continue my quest. I must find the chamber of the princess, but it is guarded by two of Gwyn’s loyal knights.”

“But you fought the bell gargoyles! You killed Quelaag! I have seen you slay countless hollows and press on fearlessly through the depths of the burg. Your tenacity is unmatched - I’ve never met anyone, let alone an undead, with such raw determination.”

“And it means nothing. Compared to the denizens of Anor Londo, my tenacity is worthless. Already, I have died at the hands of Gwyn’s Dragonslayer more times than I care to recount, but I am cursed, and that death will never be made permanent.”

“All the more reason to keep fighting!”

“All the more reason to give up. Chasing the impossible is a fool’s errand, and I am sick of being made a fool. My journey ends here.”

“Drink the Estus, you will feel better.” Laurentius suggested. The chosen undead furrowed her brow and set herself down against the earth once more.

“I will not.”

Laurentius nodded slowly, and cast his eyes downwards at his latest unfinished carving. It was a flask of Estus, a gift for the firekeeper. He wondered if she would accept it or see it as another reminder of a grim duty she hadn’t wanted.

 

With time, the chosen undead healed. The bonfire cleansed her wounds, though her complexion didn’t improve. Laurentius lent her a knife and taught her what he had taught himself about whittling. She was far from proficient, but she was methodical, and eventually she improved.

“You do not give up so easily at this.” Laurentius remarked.

“I do not give up easily at anything” she replied flatly.

“Anor Londo is the wood. You simply need to have patience. Carve it away, stroke by stroke, until it is the shape you want.”

“Easier said than done, swamp-dweller. Have you been seared with the lightning of Gwyn? Have you had your still-living bones crushed while attempting to crawl away? Have you fallen from spires and battlements, to feel the agony of impact rend your entire body?” 

The chosen undead stabbed the knife into the ground and stood up, animated and furious.

“Have you felt all this, only to be denied the peace of death, only to wake up staring into the flames of another thrice-forsaken bonfire with nothing to do but experience it all again? There are no days here! I scuttle around attempting the impossible while the sun slowly dies and we are plunged into darkness!”

She held up the butterfly she had been carving, waving it with a mad intensity.

“You dare compare all I have endured to a handmaiden’s simple craft?”

Laurentius cowered. He couldn’t help it. When this seemed not to placate her, he apologized profusely. She calmed down, and he implored her to continue her craft and forget what he had said. Quietly, she agreed, and continued carving the butterfly.

 

“I’ve never seen anything like what you’re carving. It’s beautiful.” Laurentius told her, attempting to mend whatever nerve he had struck.

“It is.” She agreed grimly. “It’s a creature I met in the darkroot woods, past the parish. Twice it killed me before I slew it.”

“Why did you bother slaying it?”

“I don’t know. I know not why it attacked me. There are such a great many things I do not know about my quest. About the world. I feel as though I am navigating it blindly, crawling on my belly towards the unknown.”

Laurentius nodded slowly.

“I feel I am doing the same.” He said honestly, and the chosen undead scowled at him, but this time didn’t raise her voice. Instead, she turned her attention to the knife and continued.

 

When the carving was finished, the chosen undead was looking a little better. Some of her skin was reforming in patches, as though the activity had restored bits of her humanity. She asked Laurentius to try once more to teach her pyromancy. The lesson went as slow as it had the first time she had tried it, and her attempts were floundering, uneducated. But learning pyromancy wasn’t a simple exchange of knowledge. It had to be discovered, to be felt, and so Laurentius watched as she struggled to find her inner fire.

 

Her departure was as unexpected as her arrival. Laurentius woke to find her standing over him, clad in the armor he had haphazardly repaired. Bleary-eyed, he shuffled to look up at her.

“You wish for another lesson in pyromancy?” he asked, confused.

“I’ve come to say goodbye.”

“Ah.” He scrambled to his feet. Unsure of what to do or say, he limply outstretched his hand to shake hers. She shook back firmly, and he noticed with a swelling of hope that she was wearing the pyromancer’s gauntlet that he had gifted her.

She nodded, turned back wordlessly towards the undead parish, and began to walk away. It was the same determined gait that he had first seen her using when she had rescued him. As she turned, he noticed the butterfly carving hanging from her belt like a talisman. It had replaced the prayer beads that she once carried. 

Laurentius called after her.

“Good bye then! Be safe, friend! Don't you dare go Hollow.”

**Author's Note:**

> I think the point of this game was that you only go hollow when you give up. It doesn't matter how many times you die as long as you have the will to keep trying. I got so frustrated that I almost quit at Anor Londo on my first playthrough, but I started thinking about the game a lot more and eventually returned and made it through. I did take a break to head back to Firelink, and talking to Laurentius there is what inspired this story.
> 
> Laurentius feels like the only NPC that really has empathy for what you're doing. He's really on your side and his parting words, "Don't you dare go hollow" really resonated with me. Consider this part of an AU where he never learns about Quelana's pryomancies, and doesn't go hollow in Blighttown.


End file.
